Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?

By BROOKS BARNES

Published: September 24, 2007

The Walt Disney Company has prospered by keeping an extra-tight leash on its animated critters. Publish a comic book depicting Mickey Mouse as a sadomasochistic smoker, as a group of underground cartoonists did in the 1970s, and prepare for a not-so-magical encounter with copyright lawyers.

So why is Disney tolerating YouTube videos that turn Bambi, Simba and Winnie the Pooh into rap stars? YouTube users started posting the videos, set to ''Crank That (Soulja Boy)'' by the rapper Soulja Boy, about five months ago.

The postings (called mash-ups), are made by editing together snippets of animated movies and TV shows. The finished products look like music videos in which the cartoon characters do the singing. As ''Crank That'' climbed the music charts over the summer -- the song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this month -- the videos started gaining in popularity and users edited together versions using characters owned by other big media companies. A version using clips taken from Nickelodeon's ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' has been viewed more than seven million times.

Nickelodeon, part of Viacom, sees the humorous videos as fair use of its copyrighted content. ''Our audiences can creatively mash video from our content as much and as often as they like,'' said Dan Martinsen, a Nickelodeon spokesman. ''By the way,'' he added, ''that was a very nice edit job by whoever did the SpongeBob mash.'' (That laissez-faire reaction, it should be noted, comes from a company whose corporate parent has a $1 billion piracy lawsuit pending against Google, the owner of YouTube.)

Disney's view is starkly different: any unauthorized use of Disney property is stealing. Still, the company picks its battles carefully. While it closely monitors the Web for infractions, Disney will not discuss how it evaluates potential cases of copyright infringement and declined to comment on the ''Crank That'' videos.

The fact that the postings have not been removed -- YouTube regularly yanks videos that media companies identify as pirated material -- highlights the situation mash-ups pose for media companies: are these videos parodies of cultural icons and thus protected under copyright law, or do they trample on intellectual property?

Anthony Falzone, a copyright expert at Stanford, said, ''media companies have been fairly tolerant of Internet mash-ups and parodies so far. Wholesale piracy is a much bigger issue, so that is where they are focusing most of their efforts.''

PHOTOS: On the MTV Web site, the ''Crank That (Soulja Boy)'' video. On YouTube, a cartoon parody to the song featuring Winnie the Pooh and some friends. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MTV) (PHOTOGRAPH BY YOUTUBE)